Ive recompiled the mod with the new "no compression" option and I must report that the initialization takes basicaly 1 second instead of 1 minute.
Loading is faster, but not by order of magnitude as the initialization.
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One more thing... prepare for a 5gb download

There should be the possibility to compress it to the native graphics card format?

This is about the compression of the mod, not of the data inside it.
Or more simply put... what is inside the mod is always the same, just the packaging of the mod is different. Think about it as a rar or zip...
It reduces the size, but doesnt change what is inside.
The more you reduce the size, the more you need to wait for it to unpack.
This creates the longer loads and long initialization.
Now we can skip the compression...
So we get the benefits of faster loads/initialization. Only downsize is it takes more space on your HDD.
But since its just a few gb we talking about here, this is not a problem.
Data is in the GFX card friendly format no matter the compression of the package

Main map by VMblast
Borders by MasonFace
Ive put it together, and added the KoW kind of touches (reflections of ship and sea monster, and the shadows around the map so it fits the screen and borders better, plus soem work on the actual borders...

Next step is the texts... not sure I can import it now, time will tell

MAP.jpg (1.15 MiB) Viewed 401 times

And the upscaled local maps... there are few edges on them, 1280*640 resolution is not enough so they get rescaled... might up it laters